The European Court of Justice has dismissed Slovakia and Hungary’s legal
challenge to the system of mandatory migrant quotas, devised by the
European Commission as a means of dealing with the migrant crisis. The
Czech Republic, which is
also one of the countries rejecting the forced distribution of migrants,
says
the ruling will make no difference to its stand.

Photo: Fotomovimiento, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The ruling of the EU’s highest court on the mandatory redistribution of
migrants around the EU sparked another heated exchange between the
European
Commission and the countries against which it has launched infringement
proceedings over their failure to comply with the EU’s solidarity
mechanism. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban called the decision
“rape of European law and values,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico
said
nobody could force Slovakia to take a step it considered to be wrong, and
Poland and the Czech Republic, noted that the verdict would not change
their policy on migrants.

In response to a warning from the EU commissioner for migrants, Dimitris
Avramopoulos, for the said states to meet their obligations and implement
EU solidarity in full or else the EC would take them to court, Czech
officials pointed out that unlike Hungary and Slovakia they had not
challenged the mandatory quota system as such, but had repeatedly stated
that the system was simply not functional. Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír
Zaorálek:

“Our objections to this mechanism are based on the argument that it
does
not work in practice and we want to see it revised. We do not approve of
the fact that we have this mechanism in the EU where countries are bound
to
go through the motions of providing data and numbers when in reality it is
clear the requirements cannot be met.”

Lubomír Zaorálek, photo: Filip Jandourek
The Czech Republic, which has taken in only around 12 refugees of the
close to 2,700 allotted to it under the EC mechanism, recently argued that
Italy and Greece from which it was to take in migrants had not enabled it
to carry out the detailed background investigation checks on the refugees
in question. According to the Czech Interior Ministry the Italian and
Greek
authorities permitted only the most basic questions to be posed to
refugees
earmarked for relocation and eventually ceased communicating altogether.

“The conditions under which the system was to operate are simply
not
being met and the present debate in Europe on this matter shows that our
reservations are justified,” Minister Zaorálek said.

Meanwhile, Czech President Miloš Zeman, known for his fiery anti-migrant
rhetoric, said at a public gathering that the country should not give way
to EU pressure.

“If the worst comes to the worst, then it would be better to forego
EU
subsidies than open the door to migrants.”